G8 fun or What’s the German for, “I’m not doing that!”?

Jose Manuel Barroso, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Stephen Harper and Dmitry Medvedev during the G8 Summit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In honour of day one of the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland I’m posting my favourite G8 photo op from last year’s meeting at Camp David.

Obama appears in the video with his sleeves rolled up, and as the reporter remarks, most of the leaders who showed up (not Putin, who’s becoming more and more rebuffed by the in-crowd) seem to have received the “sweater memo.” Clearly the casual attire is meant to connote the hard work ethic of the leaders who want to shed any whiff of elitism from these regular Joes.

But it’s definitely follow the leader in this instance. Obama is a relaxed genial fellow here who keeps waving at the cameras. It cracks me up how our PM Stephen Harper–as well as most of the other leaders, follow suit rather awkwardly every time the US president waves.

Best yet though! Angela Merkel looks politely at the sad attempt of the other leaders to be good ol’ boys like their American host. She stands there with a bemused smile on her face as if to say, “Yeah, I’m not doing that. Nope not doing it.”